northern europeans began to think of — or at least write about — themselves as individuals beginning in the eleventh century a.d. [pgs. 158, 160, and 64-67 – bolding and links inserted by me]:

“The discovery of the individual was one of the most important cultural [*ahem*] developments in the years between 1050 and 1200. It was not confined to any one group of thinkers. Its central features may be found in different circles: a concern with self-discovery; an interest in the relations between people, and in the role of the individual within society; an assessment of people by their inner intentions rather than by their external acts. These concerns were, moreover, conscious and deliberate. ‘Know yourself’ was one of the most frequently quoted injunctions. The phenomenon which we have been studying was found in some measure in every part of urbane and intelligent society.

“It remains to ask how much this movement contributed to the emergence of the distinctively Western view of the individual…. The continuous history of several art-forms and fields of study, which are particularly concerned with the individual, began at this time: auto-biography, psychology, the personal portrait, and satire were among them….

“The years between 1050 and 1200 must be seen…as a turning-point in the history of Christian devotion. There developed a new pattern of interior piety, with a growing sensitivity, marked by personal love for the crucified Lord and an easy and free-flowing meditation on the life and passion of Christ….

“The word ‘individual’ did not, in the twelfth century, have the same meaning as it does today. The nearest equivalents were *individuum*, *individualis*, and *singularis*, but these terms belonged to logic rather than to human relations….

“The age had, however, other words to express its interest in personality. We hear a great deal of ‘the self’, not expressed indeed in that abstract way, but in such terms as ‘knowing oneself’, ‘descending into oneself’, or ‘considering oneself’. Another common term was *anima*, which was used, ambiguously in our eyes, for both the spiritual identity (‘soul’) of a man and his directing intelligence (‘mind’). Yet another was ‘the inner man’, a phrase found in Otloh of Saint Emmeram and Guibert of Nogent, who spoke also of the ‘inner mystery’. Their vocabulary, while it was not the same as ours, was therefore rich in terms suited to express the ideas of self-discovery and self-exploration.

“Know Yourself

“Self-knowledge was one of the dominant themes of the age…. These writers all insisted on self-knowledge as fundamental. Thus Bernard wrote to Pope Eugenius, a fellow-Cistercian, about 1150: ‘Begin by considering yourself — no, rather, end by that….For you, you are the first; you are also the last.’ So did Aelred of Rievaulx: ‘How much does a man know, if he does not know himself?’ The Cistercian school was not the only one to attach such a value to self-knowledge. About 1108 Guibert of Nogent began his history of the Crusade with a modern-sounding reflection about the difficulty of determining motive:

“‘It is hardly surprising if we make mistakes in narrating the actions of other people, when we cannot express in words even our own thoughts and deeds; in fact, we can hardly sort them out in our own minds. It is useless to talk about intentions, which, as we know, are often so concealed as scarcely to be discernible to the understanding of the inner man.’

“Self-knowledge, then, was a generally popular ideal.”
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there seem to be two broad sociobiological/genocultural packages when it comes to average nepotistic vs. not-so-nepotistic altruistic behaviors in human populations — these are not binary opposites, but rather the ends of some sort of continuum of behavioral traits [click on table for LARGER view]:

the common thread running through the not-so-nepotistic groups of today (primarily northwest europeans) is a long history of outbreeding (i.e. avoiding close matings, like cousin marriage). (and a long history of manorialism. yes, i WILL start my series on medieval manorialism soon!) while individualism and guilt cultures may have been present in northern europe in paleolithic or even mesolithic populations, these behavioral traits and mindsets were definitely not present in the pre-christian germanic, british, or irish populations of late antiquity. those populations were very much all about clans and kindreds, feuding and honor, shame, and group consensus. guilt/individualistic cultures (i.e. not-so-nepostic societies) can come and go depending at least partly on long-term mating patterns. human evolution can be recent as well as aeons old.

the individualistic guilt-culture of northwest (“core”) europeans today came into existence thanks to their extensive outbreeding during the medieval period (…and the manorialism). the outbreeding started in earnest in the 800s (at least in northern france) and, as we saw above, by 1050-1100 thoughts on individualis began to stir. around the same time, communes appeared in northern italy and parts of france — civic societies. violence rates begin to fall in the 1200s, especially in more outbred populations, i would argue (guess!) because the impulsive violence related to clan feuding was no longer being selected for.

by the 1300-1400s, after an additional couple hundred years of outbreeding, the renaissance was in full swing due to the “wikification” of northern european society — i.e. that nw europeans now possessed a set of behavioral traits that drove them to work cooperatively with non-relatives — to share openly knowledge and ideas and labor in reciprocally altruistic ways. the enlightenment? well, that was just the full flowering of The Outbreeding Project — an explosion of these not-so-nepotistic behavioral traits that had been selected for over the preceding 800 to 900 years. individualism? universalism? liberal democracy? tolerance? reason? skepticism? coffeehouses? the age of enlightenment IS what core europeans are all about! hurray! (^_^) the Project and its effects are ongoing today.

it could be argued that the fact that certain mating patterns seem to go together with certain societal types is just a coincidence — or that it’s the societal type that affects or dictates the mating patterns. for example, i said in my recent post on shame and guilt in ancient greece that:

“if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll recognize all of those shame cultures as having had long histories of inbreeding: maternal cousin marriage was traditionally very common in east asia (here’re japan and china); paternal cousin marriage is still going strong in the arabized world; and cousin marriage was prevelant in the mediterranean up until very recently (here’s italy, for example).”

perhaps, you say, the causal direction is that nepotistic, clannish shame-cultures somehow promote close matings (cousin marriage or whatever). well, undoubtedly there are reinforcing feedback loops here, but the upshot is that both ancient greece and medieval-modern europe clearly illustrate that the mating patterns come first. (possibly ancient rome, too, but i’ll come back to that another day.) the pre-christian northern european societies were clannish shame-cultures until after the populations switched to outbreeding (avoiding cousin marriage) in the early medieval period. late archaic-early classical greek society was rather (a bit borderline) universalistic, individualistic [pg. 160+] and guilt-based until after they began to marry their cousins with greater frequency (at least in classical athens). the not-so-nepotistic guilt-culture we see now in northwest european populations is particularly resilient, i think, because the outbreeding has been carried out for a particularly long time (since at least the 800s) and thanks to the complementary selection pressures of the medieval manor system (which ancient greece lacked), but it did not exist before the early medieval period.

i thought i’d do a big summary post on the hajnal line, just to have everything in once place. (^_^) sorry, there is no tl;dr, so go get yourself a cup of coffee. i’ll wait here.

back already?! ok…

so, here is the hajnal line:

from wikipedia: “The line in red is Hajnal’s. The dark blue lines show areas of high nuptiality west of the Hajnal line.”

obviously this is a schematic map. the true hajnal line should, no doubt, be all squiggly. i also suspect that a few other areas in western europe ought to be “outside” the hajnal line as well: highland scotland most definitely and galicia in spain possibly, although that latter one is more of a guess. possibly brittany, too, while i’m at it. oh, and it also appears as though the hajnal line should run through finland somewhere, separating the east from the west, with the eastern part being INSIDE the line. more on that…someday. (*^_^*)

anyway, more from wikipedia: “The Hajnal line is a border that links Saint Petersburg, Russia and Trieste, Italy. In 1965, John Hajnal discovered it divides Europe into two areas characterized by a different levels of nuptiality. To the west of the line, marriage rates and thus fertility were comparatively low and a significant minority of women married late or remained single; to the east of the line and in the Mediterranean and select pockets of Northwestern Europe, early marriage was the norm and high fertility was countered by high mortality.

“West of this line, the average age of marriage for women was 23 or more, men 26, spouses were relatively close in age, a substantial number of women married for the first time in their thirties and forties, and 10% to 20% of adults never married. East of the line, the mean age of both sexes at marriage was earlier, spousal age disparity was greater and marriage more nearly universal. Subsequent research has amply confirmed Hajnal’s continental divide, and what has come to be known as the ‘Western European marriage pattern’, although historical demographers have also noted that there are significant variations within the region; to the west of the line, about half of all women aged 15 to 50 years of age were married while the other half were widows or spinsters; to the east of the line, about seventy percent of women in that age bracket were married while the other thirty percent were widows or nuns….

“The region’s late marriage pattern has received considerable scholarly attention in part because it appears to be unique; it has not been found in any other part of the world prior to the Twentieth Century. The origins of the late marriage system are a matter of conjecture prior to the 16th Century when the demographic evidence from family reconstitution studies makes the prevalence of the pattern clear; while evidence is scanty, most English couples seemed to marry for the first time in their early twenties before the Black Death and afterward, when economic conditions were better, often married in their late teens.”

so, the two big things that hajnal discovered: late marriage common in western europe plus a lot of individuals never marrying in western europe.

as if that weren’t interesting enough on its own, there seems to be a lot of other things connected — or somehow related — to the hajnal line. for instance, the distribution of nuclear families in europe. here’s a map of emmanuel todd‘s traditional family systems in europe — the absolute, egalitarian, and stem families (yellow, blue, and green on the map) are all types of nuclear or small-sized families (the stem family is the immediate family plus one set of grandparents, so it has slightly more members than a pure nuclear family). as you can see, small families (nuclear and stem families) occur most frequently to the west of or “inside” the hajnal line, community or extended families more frequently outside of it (h/t m.g. for the map! — hajnal line added by me):

the distribution of average national iqs also seems to be related to the hajnal line — in general, higher average national iqs are found inside the hajnal line rather than outside of it (h/t jayman for this map! — hajnal line added by me):

perhaps thanks to the distribution of average iqs (although i don’t think that iq is the whole story), maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to find the highest concentrations of human accomplishment in europe distributed like this, i.e. falling mostly within the hajnal line (h/t charles murray for the map! — hajnal line added by me):

nations west of the hajnal line tend to be stronger in democratic tendencies than nations east of the line. here’s a map of the economist’s intelligence [sic] unit’s 2012 democracy index results for europe — with hajnal line added (by me). the darker the green, the more democracy:

the populations west of the hajnal line also appear to be more civic-minded than those to the east of it. civicness here is determined using robert putnam’s technique of looking at participation rates in voluntary associations. the data below are drawn from the world values survey — see more details in this post — and this one, too! (sorry, i haven’t got a map for these data, so you’ll have to make do with a table. the data for each individual country can be found in this post. the eastern european countries — circled in red — are all fully or partially east of the hajnal line. the remainder are not, although remember that southern italy and southern spain — two of the “southern europeans” here — are. note also that “anglos” includes the u.s., canada, australia, etc. — for great britain’s scores, see this post. click on table for LARGER view.)

populations inside the hajnal also tend to score higher on individualism on hofstede’s individualism versus collectivism (IDV) dimension, while those outside the hajnal line are more collectivistic (see this post). here is a map of these scores that i swiped off the internet. i have a few reservations about this map which i discussed in the previous post — the raw scores are also listed in that post (hajnal line added by me):

and here’s a map taken from steven pinker’s Better Angels of the geography of homicide in late nineteenth century europe (hajnal line added by me). the homicide rates were significantly lower inside the hajnal line than outside of it in the late nineteenth century (more on this later in the post):

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so, to sum up — INSIDE (or to the west of) the hajnal line we find:

– late marriage and 10-20% of adults never marrying
– small families, either nuclear or stem
– higher average iqs than outside the line
– the highest concentrations of human accomplishment in europe
– more democracy
– greater civic-mindedness or orientation towards the commonweal
– generally low perceived corruption
– high individualism
– and low homicide rates in the 19th century

why?

at first glance, the most obvious explanation would seem to be simply that these are all germanic populations to some extent or another. we’ve got the franks and co. in france and the low countries, the visigoths in northern spain, the langobards (and others) in northern italy, the swiss, the austrians, the scandinavians, and the peoples who became “the germans” in germany after they reconquered those areas during the ostsiedlung. and maybe that’s it. maybe that’s the whole story. i don’t think so, though, although it’s likely a part of the story (perhaps even a big part, i dunno).

why don’t i think that’s the whole story?

well, first of all, despite what you might’ve heard from tacitus, the pre-christian germanics did not marry late. going by the archaeological evidence (i.e. the types of grave goods found associated with girls aged around twelve to fourteen), it appears that pre-christian germanic women married young — probably right around the time they hit puberty. not sure about the men, but the case of the females indicates that hajnal’s line does not extend back into pre-christian times. odds are, too, that, like in most other societies in the world, the majority married, but i have no evidence for that either way.

additionally, the nuclear family was not the primary foundational building block of pre-christian germanic societies. while the pre-christian germanics do seem to have had residential nuclear families, it was the extended family — the kindred — that was of utmost importance both socially and legally to the germanic tribes (see for example this post). (this, btw, is similar to sicilians and other southern italians today, as well as to the greeks — these groups have residential nuclear families, but the extended family is very, *very* important in those populations. this is something that, i think, emmanuel todd overlooked. planning to work up a post on the topic…one of these days. (^_^) )

there are also no indications that the pre-christian germanics were particularly bright. they didn’t build any aqueducts anyway.

also — and i know this will get some of you riled up — the pre-christian germanics weren’t any more democratic than any other clannish populations on the planet were in the past or are today. yes, yes, i know, i know — the things! yes. i know. you’ll have to trust me on this for now — those things are not very good indicators of the presence of democracy. at least not democracy as we know it (or like to think we know it). i will come back to this in another post, i promise! for now, please just trust me on this. (for a couple of hints on what i’ll be getting at, you can have a look at this post and the first section of this post where i mention democracy in medieval iceland.)

it’s also unlikely that the pre-christian germanics were particularly oriented towards the broader commonweal either. pre-christian germanic society was, as i said, structured around the extended family, or the kindreds, and blood-feuds between kindreds were common (and legal). in any other society that i know of which is structured like that — like afghani society today, for instance (although there they have even tighter clans — the germanic kindreds had a looser configuration) — the members are not interested in the common good. they are interested in their extended family’s good. that’s it. in such societies, too, individualism usually runs second to collectivism — again, that’s a collective attitude toward the extended family, not the broader society. not sure how much individualism there was in pre-christian germanic society. still need to find that out (if possible).

finally, the violence/homicide rates in pre-christian germanic societies were undoubtedly high. the omnipresent blood-feuds — not to mention all of the whopping great germanic swords and the seaxes — indicate that this was probably the case.
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the historic evidence for the existence of the hajnal line goes back to the 1500s, but no one’s quite sure when the pattern first emerged. the only thing that’s clear is that it was sometime between the introduction of christianity to the germanics in northern europe (which started in something like the 400s) and the 1500s.

two of the biggest changes to this area of europe beginning in the early medieval period were: the introduction of new mating patterns thanks to the catholic church and the introduction of manorialism. these two elements of medieval european society were present in the areas inside the hajnal line and were absent to various degrees in the areas outside the line. in fact, hajnal’s line lies exactly at the limits of western christendom and the (bipartite) manor system in eastern europe (and southern italy and spain and ireland, etc.). this is not my idea, but something i picked up from the historian michael mitterauer’s book Why Europe? [pgs. 45-45]:

“The most significant expansion of the model agricultural system [manorialism] in the Frankish heartland between the Seine and the Rhine took place toward the east. Its diffusion embraced almost the whole of central Europe and large parts of eastern Europe….. This great colonizing process, which transmitted Frankish agricultural structures and their accompanying forms of lordship, took off at the latest around the middle of the eighth century. Frankish majordomos or kings from the Carolingian house introduced manorial estates (*Villikation*) and the hide system (*Hufenverfassung*) throughout the royal estates east of the Rhine as well…. The eastern limit of the Carolingian Empire was for a long time an important dividing line between the expanding Frankish agricultural system and eastern European agricultural structures. When the push toward colonization continued with more force in the High Middle Ages, newer models of *Rentengrundherrschaft* predominated — but they were still founded on the hide system. This pattern was consequently established over a wide area: in the Baltic, in large parts of Poland, in Bohemia, Moravia and parts of Slovakis, in western Hungary, and in Slovenia.”

but note that the manor system was introduced into these eastern regions much later than it had been in the west. more from mitterauer:

“Colonization established a line streching roughly from St. Petersburg to Trieste. We will come across this line again when studying European family systems and their diffusion. The sixteenth century witnessed the last great attempt to establish the hide system throughout an eastern European region when King Sigismund II of Poland tried it in the Lithuanian part of his empire in what is modern-day Belarus. The eastward expansion of Frankish agrarian reform therefore spanned at least eight centuries.”

mitterauer also discusses the hows and whys of the absence of manorialism in southern italy, spain, ireland, etc. — in other words, all of the populations which are today outside the hajnal line [pg. 54]:

“Over against this ‘core Europe’ was a ‘peripheral Europe’ that did not acquire these structures until a relatively later date — or not at all. Here we can list Ireland, Wales, and Scotland in the West; the area of eastern Europe beyond the Trieste-St. Petersburg line that was unaffected by the colonization of the East; the entire Balkan region; southern Italy, which was formerly Byzantine, along with the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula that was under Moorish rule for so long a time. The political, economic, and social evolution of many regions in ‘peripheral Europe’ took a different turn because of their clinging to other, traditional agricultural systems.”

there’s no map in Why Europe? showing the areas of europe that were “manorialized” according to mitterauer, so i gave a shot at creating one based on mitterauer’s descriptions in the book (frisia was never manorialized, btw):

yup! looks pretty much just like the hajnal line.

manorialism is important for at least two reasons — and probably many more that i haven’t thought about. firstly, the whole system was based on nuclear families. in the bipartite manor system, peasants or serfs or whomever (depending on time and place in western europe) lived on and managed their own farms (let out to them by the manor owner) and also worked on the manor or paid rent to the manor. extended families very much did not fit into the manor system as it operated in western europe (there was a different development in eastern europe where extended families were very much part of the package). so manorialism — at least western manorialism — “pushed” for the nuclear family. as early as the 800s in northwestern france, families that lived and worked on manors were very small, most often being only two generations (parents and children) and occasionally including a grandparent.

the second reason manorialism was so important was because this was the vehicle via which the ecclesiastical and secular laws against cousin marriage could be enforced. as greying wanderer commented the other day:

“Not only was the land owned by the Lord of the Manor rather than by the village commune as it was elsewhere the manor with its central manor house and church was a model of combined civil and religious authority. Those villagers who wanted to get ahead with their own little plot of land had to be respectable and that meant if married it had to abide by the church’s rules.”

exactly!

so, because the populations in peripheral europe missed out on manorialism, they also missed out on the “push” for nuclear families and the more stringent enforcement of the cousin marriage bans.

however, mitterauer makes the point that it appears as though conversion to christianity was needed first before manorialism could be successfully introduced [pg. 77]:

“The introduction of Christianity always preceded the introduction of the hide system throughout the entire colonization in the East — often by only a slight difference in time, but occasionally centuries earlier. The time sequence was never reversed, anywhere. The western agrarian system at all times found a state of affairs where Christian conversion had either relaxed or weakened older patrilineal patterns. This process had already paved the way for the transition to a bilateral system of kinship and the conjugal family.”

medieval christianity weakened the old patrilineal clannish (or kindred-based) systems because it insisted upon the avoidance of cousin marriage which reduced the genetic ties between extended family members and set the stage for the selection of very different behavioral patterns in parts of northwestern europe — “core” europe. orthodox christianity in eastern europe also banned close cousin marriage, but this came later in that area of the world (since they adopted christianity later), and enforcement was not as firm as in the west — the secular regulations on marriage in medieval russia, for instance, flip-flopped several times and do not seem to have backed up the orthodox church’s canon laws as consistently as secular authorities had tended to do in the west (see here and here for example). and, again, the manor system was a very late arrival in eastern europe, and in many places it was not a bipartite system based upon nuclear families. the eastern european extended family networks were incorporated into the manor system which developed there, because the extended family had never been broken apart in the east, since the cousin marriage bans were adopted at a later point in time and were not as strongly enforced.
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the long-term outbreeding of northwestern europeans, which began in the early medieval period, resulted in a new social environment for these populations. gone were the clans and kindreds, gone were the extended families, gone was the close genetic relatedness between extended family members (in inbreeding societies, the probability that first cousins share genes [alleles] in common can be nearly double of that in outbreeding societies). this was all replaced by a society based upon individuals and their nuclear families — and each of these “new europeans” were more unique genetic individuals than those in more inbred societies who share more genes in common with their relatives.

with a new environment — in this case a new social environment — comes new selection pressures. the question to ask with regard to these big changes in medieval western europe is who succeeded in this brave new world? what sort of individuals managed to do well in life and reproduce successfully? the most. what sorts of personality traits did “the fittest” have? intelligence levels? behavioral patterns? what sorts of genes got selected for in this new environment?

the new patterns of genetic relatedness between individuals would’ve (i think) changed the speed at which alleles for different sorts of behavioral traits — especially those related to altruistic behaviors — might’ve been selected (see here for example). in a long-term outbreeding society, it might pay to be altruistic towards two brothers or eight cousins, but if you’re from a long-term inbreeding society, you might only need to be altruistic towards four or five cousins to achieve the same genetic payoff. and, if you actually are altruistic towards the full number of eight cousins, whatever “genes for altruism” that you and your cousins carry will be selected for faster than in an outbreeding society, since you all carry more copies of them than outbreeding individuals do.

in the societies outside the hajnal line, then, where the populations experienced, to differing degrees, more long-term inbreeding than those inside the hajnal line, people continue to favor their family members (or those whom they consider “one of theirs”) more. such behaviors continued to pay — genetically speaking — for longer, so these “altruistic” behaviors never got weeded out of those populations — or not so much anyway. therefore, the individuals in populations outside of the hajnal line tend to exhibit innate behaviors that favor themselves as members of extended families as opposed to favoring themselves as individual players in a broader community. this common thread of favoring the family (and/or intimate allies) can, i think, explain the common characteristics of societies that are outside the hajnal line: being comprised of large, tightly-knit extended families; having low average iqs (because individuals don’t have to fend for themselves as much?); having less democracy, less civic-mindedness, and greater amounts of corruption (including nepotism) since everyone is more oriented towards their own than to unrelated strangers; and having higher homicide rates.

on the other hand, what sorts of traits would’ve been selected for in individuals in long-term outbreeding societies where there would’ve been less of a genetic payoff in being altruistic towards extended family? i think you would (or could) have greater selection for individuals having behavioral traits which drive them to contribute more to the broader community. since the payoff for aiding extended family was no longer so great in “core” europe after many generations of outbreeding (i.e. avoiding close cousin marriage), it might’ve begun to pay equally well — or well enough — to aid non-family members (rather than extended family members) — to cooperate with them in the hopes of receiving aid back. in a society where one doesn’t have an extended family to fall back on, it might be very useful to possess traits which enable the successful collaboration with non-family — being trusting and trustworty, for instance. a society of such individuals might very likely: be comprised of small-sized families; have a higher average iq since individuals had to fend for themselves more; have more (liberal) democracy, more civic-mindedness, and less corruption since everyone would be more oriented towards the commonweal and not towards their extended family members. homicide rates would be low, too.
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if this hajnal line divide between western and eastern europe sounds a lot like huntington’s civilizational divide which steve sailer posted about the other day, that’s because it probably is very much the same divide. but the divide is not just between the western and eastern churches, it’s a divide between a long history of different mating patterns and family types in the west versus the east — much more outbreeding (i.e. the avoidance of close cousin marriage) for a longer period of time, and the development of and emphasis upon small families as opposed to large extended families, in the west and not in the east — and the divergent selection pressures that the two european civilizations underwent thanks to the differing mating patterns/family types. from huntington:

“The most significant dividing line in Europe, as William Wallace has suggested, may well be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs along what are now the boundaries between Finland and Russia and between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from Orthodox eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost exactly along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line, of course, coincides with the historic boundary between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The peoples to the north and west of this line are Protestant or Catholic; they shared the common experiences of European history — feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution; they are generally economically better off than the peoples to the east; and they may now look forward to increasing involvement in a common European economy and to the consolidation of democratic political systems. The peoples to the east and south of this line are Orthodox or Muslim; they historically belonged to the Ottoman or Tsarist empires and were only lightly touched by the shaping events in the rest of Europe; they are generally less advanced economically; they seem much less likely to develop stable democratic political systems.”

the earliest start to what i’ve (jokingly!) dubbed The Outbreeding Project in europe that i’ve found so far occurred in northeast france/the low countries and southeastern england. this, i think, is the core of “core europe”:

outbreeding began earliest in this region as did manorialism, and both radiated out from this central core mainly to the south and east. my bet is that there exists a gradient or clinal(-like) spread of whatever genes (alleles) are connected to the civicness behavioral traits belonging to the long-term outbreeding western european populations and that that spread starts in and around the area of the green circle (if the theory is right at all, that is! (~_^) ).

one set of behaviors that definitely began in this region and radiated out from it was the marked reduction in violence (homicides) in the middle ages as discussed by steven pinker in Better Angels. a fellow named manuel eisner found [see previous post]:

“[T]he data suggest that the secular trajectories of low homicide rates differ among large geographic areas. It appears that English homicide rates were already considerably lower in the late sixteenth century than during the late Middle Ages and that they declined continuously along a log-linear trend over several centuries. Extant estimates for the Netherlands and Belgium suggest a very similar structure trend in these areas. In the Scandinavian countries, the transistion to the decreasing trend occurs notably later, namely in the first decades after 1600. Despite huge gaps in the data, the German-speaking areas may also be assumed to have joined the declining trend from the early seventeenth century onwards. For Italy, however, all the available data indicate that acts of individual-level lethal violence remained very frequent until the early nineteenth century. It is not until the mid-nineteenth century that the rate begins to decline, but then very steeply.”

as i said in my previous post:

“hmmmm. now where have i heard a pattern like this before? england, the netherlands, germans earliest in *something*…scandinavians later…italians last.”

liberal democracy also starts in this core of “core europe” — it was pretty much invented by the english. the dutch pretty much invented capitalism (per daniel hannan). and t.greer points out that this is exactly where the great economic divergence began earliest:

“A few months ago I suggested that many of these debates that surround the ‘Great Divergence’ are based on a flawed premise — or rather, a flawed question. As I wrote:

“‘Rather than focus on why Europe diverged from the rest in 1800 we should be asking why the North Sea diverged from the rest in 1000.‘

“By 1200 Western Europe has a GDP per capita higher than most parts of the world, but (with two exceptions) by 1500 this number stops increasing. In both data sets the two exceptions are Netherlands and Great Britain. These North Sea economies experienced sustained GDP per capita growth for six straight centuries. The North Sea begins to diverge from the rest of Europe long before the ‘West’ begins its more famous split from ‘the rest.’

“[W]e can pin point the beginning of this ‘little divergence’ with greater detail. In 1348 Holland’s GDP per capita was $876. England’s was $777. In less than 60 years time Holland’s jumps to $1,245 and England’s to 1090. The North Sea’s revolutionary divergence started at this time.”
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so, apart from indicating patterns of nuptuality in late medieval and modern europe, hajnal’s line also represents the extent of both manorialism and The Outbreeding Project on the continent. both of these together set up a very new and different sort of social environment for western europeans — a new, and quite unique, social environment which exerted some very different sorts of selection pressures on the populations, particularly on social behaviors, but perhaps on other traits as well.

i’ve been wondering lately what sorts of selection pressures the manor system on its own might’ve had on the population. time preference might be a big one — and this is where all of the late marriage comes in. couples often had to wait for a small farm to become available on a manor before they could marry and begin having kids. those who could wait may very well have been more successful than those who couldn’t (and who would’ve been shipped off to monasteries and nunneries for their lack of chastity). perhaps higher iq individuals, who could successfully manage their own farms as part of the manor system, also did well.

that’s it for now!

many thanks, btw, to all of you out there who have been thinking this through with me for the last couple of years! (^_^) i would name names, but then i’d probably forget to mention someone — ya’ll know who you are! thank you, thank you, thank you! (^_^)
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Your Ancestors, Your Fate – “The notion of genetic transmission of ‘social competence’ — some mysterious mix of drive and ability — may unsettle us. But studies of adoption, in some ways the most dramatic of social interventions, support this view. A number of studies of adopted children in the United States and Nordic countries show convincingly that their life chances are more strongly predicted from their biological parents than their adoptive families. In America, for example, the I.Q. of adopted children correlates with their adoptive parents’ when they are young, but the correlation is close to zero by adulthood. There is a low correlation between the incomes and educational attainment of adopted children and those of their adoptive parents. These studies, along with studies of correlations across various types of siblings (identical twins, fraternal twins, half siblings) suggest that genetics is the main carrier of social status.” – from gregory clark. see also The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility.

Reductionism! Determinism! Straw-man-ism! – ” The main problem, it seems to me, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what genetics as a science studies and how it relates to the function of complex systems. The following statements are not contradictory: 1. The function of a complex system emerges from the complex and dynamic interactions between all of the components of the system, in a context- and experience-dependent manner. 2. Variation in single components of the system (or in multiple components) can affect how it functions. Geneticists investigate the second question. Showing that variation in Gene X affects the behaviour or outcome of a system is not the same as saying that Gene X fully determines that behaviour or fully accounts for the entire system. Gene X is just a piece of DNA sitting in a cell somewhere – it doesn’t do anything by itself. But a *difference* in Gene X can account for a *difference* in how the system works.“ – from kevin mitchell.

There’s nothing wrong with looking for ‘gay genes’ – “The Left loves to tell the Right that it’s anti-science, pointing (not without reason) to the correlation between conservative beliefs and a failure to come to terms with the scientific facts of evolution and human-caused climate change. But there’s a subtler tendency on the Left; a fear of research into human nature, in case the findings are in some way politically uncomfortable.”

Scientists unlock a ‘microbial Pompeii’ – “An international team of researchers have discovered a ‘microbial Pompeii’ preserved on the teeth of skeletons around 1,000 years old. The key to the discovery is the dental calculus (plaque) which preserves bacteria and microscopic particles of food on the surfaces of teeth, effectively creating a mineral tomb for microbiomes.”

The effect of paternal age on offspring intelligence and personality when controlling for paternal trait level [pdf] – “We examined the effect of father’s age at birth on offspring intelligence, head circumference and personality traits. Using the Minnesota Twin Family Study sample we tested paternal age effects while controlling for parents’ trait levels measured with the same precision as offspring’s. From evolutionary genetic considerations we predicted a negative effect of paternal age on offspring intelligence, but not on other traits. Controlling for parental intelligence (IQ) had the effect of turning an initially positive association non-significantly negative. We found paternal age effects on offspring IQ and Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Absorption, but they were not robustly significant, nor replicable with additional covariates. No other noteworthy effects were found.” – from lars penke.

Reversed hierarchy in the brain for general and specific cognitive abilities: A morphometric analysis – “Here, we analyze gray matter with three morphometric indices (volume, cortical surface area, and cortical thickness) at three levels of the intelligence hierarchy (tests, first-order factors, and a higher-order general factor, g)…. The key finding reveals substantial variability in gray matter correlates at the test level, which is substantially reduced for the first-order and the higher-order factors. This supports a reversed hierarchy in the brain with respect to cognitive abilities at different psychometric levels: the greater the generality, the smaller the number of relevant gray matter clusters accounting for individual differences in intelligent performance.” – h/t ben southwood!

A nice bunch of flowers – “The general factor of intelligence is strongest at lower levels of intelligence. It may be a case of ‘All neurones to the pump’. When abilities are low, most problems are difficult. In such cases, all resources have to be thrown at the problem. When abilities are higher there is more spare capacity for differentiation of abilities. Brighter persons have a lower proportion of their abilities accounted for by a common factor, even though the have higher absolute abilities.” – from dr. james thompson.

Fruit-loving lemurs score higher on spatial memory tests – “Food-finding tests in five lemur species show that fruit-eaters may have better spatial memory than lemurs with a more varied diet. The results support the idea that relying on foods that are seasonally available and far-flung gives a competitive edge to individuals with certain cognitive abilities — such as remembering where the goodies are.”

Four Lame Responses to Sam Harris’ Moral Landscape Challenge – “Moral emotions, like every other evolved trait, exist because their presence increased the probability that the genes responsible for the existence of those traits would survive and reproduce. Moral emotions, and the associated illusions of the existence of Good and Evil as things in themselves, exist as subjective impressions in the minds of individuals.” – from helian.

Free will beliefs and motivation to punish – “In a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Cory J. Clark and co-authors provide evidence that widespread belief in the existence of free will is bolstered by a fundamental desire to punish wrongdoers…. As Clark et al. put it, ‘There seems little doubt that the subjective experience of choosing and acting supports people’s belief in free will, but our findings suggest another powerful motivating factor: the human impulse to blame and punish. People believe in free will – at least in part – because they wish to affirm that people who do immoral things could have and should have acted differently’.”

Creativity and personality in classical, jazz and folk musicians – “[J]azz musicians are more frequently engaged in extracurricular musical activities, and also complete a higher number of creative musical achievements. Additionally, jazz musicians show higher ideational creativity as measured by divergent thinking tasks, and tend to be more open to new experiences than classical musicians. This study provides first empirical evidence that jazz musicians show particularly high creativity with respect to domain-specific musical accomplishments but also in terms of domain-general indicators of divergent thinking ability that may be relevant for musical improvisation.” – h/t mary louise cowan!

Migration and interaction in a contact zone: mtDNA variation among Bantu-speakers in southern Africa – “In this study, we analyze complete mtDNA genome sequences from over 900 Bantu-speaking individuals from Angola, Zambia, Namibia, and Botswana to investigate the demographic processes at play during the last stages of the Bantu expansion. Our results show that most of these Bantu-speaking populations are genetically very homogenous, with no genetic division between speakers of Eastern and Western Bantu languages. Most of the mtDNA diversity in our dataset is due to different degrees of admixture with autochthonous populations.”

Silver Blaze – “[I]n most parts of Europe, it looks as if modern populations inherited the three EEF/WHG/ANE groups (Levantine farmers, West Hunters and Sibermen) via only two proximate ancestral populations. Europe at the time was almost entirely occupied by Sardinian-like farmers – then another population moved in, one that had about 3 times as much West Hunter as Sibermen.” – from greg cochran.

Replacement or continuity? – “Ancient DNA seems to promise a clearer picture because the only source of uncertainty is the age of the skeletal material. Unfortunately, this new method is more sensitive to uncertainty from another source: natural selection. Late hunter-gatherers and early farmers had to adapt to different environments. There certainly was a genetic divide between the two, but did it result from differences in origin or from differences in natural selection?” – from peter frost.

The parasite that escaped out of Africa: Tracing origins of malaria parasite – “An international team has traced the origin of the second-worst malaria parasite of humans to Africa. The closest genetic relatives of human *Plasmodium vivax* were found only in Asian macaques, leading researchers to believe that *P. vivax* originated in Asia. This study overturns that, finding that wild-living apes in central Africa are widely infected with parasites that, genetically, are nearly identical to human *P. vivax*.” – h/t hbd bibliography!

Are Rich People Really That Selfish? – New Queendom.com Study Looks At Impact of Socio-Economic Status on Altruistic Tendencies – “‘Our personality impacts every aspect of our life – the choices we make, the people we surround ourselves with, the career we pursue, the way we respond to life experiences, the way we manage our finances, and whether or not we share our good fortune,’ explains Dr. Jerabek, president of the company…. [H]ow individuals conduct themselves when they have money has everything to do with who they are as a person. Money doesn’t make a person more or less selfish. If you are a genuinely kind and giving person, you’ll continue to be that way no matter how many zeros are on your paycheck.'”

Burials uncovered in Ireland reflect fusion of Paganism and Christianity – “Excavations at Caherconnell in County Clare, Ireland, have uncovered ancient burials that reflect a fusion of Pagan practices with Christianity. Although it was initially believed that Christianity was well established in Ireland by the 5th Century, the latest finding reveals that Celtic Paganism was not quick to die out.” – h/t derek hopper!

The Society of Mutual Autopsy – “The Society of Mutual Autopsy was an organisation formed in the late 1800s to advance neuroscience by examining dead members’ brains and to promote atheism by breaking sacred taboos.”

bonus bonus: Hubble Finds Possible Oldest Object Ever Seen – “The Hubble Telescope’s new set of Frontier Fields images includes a galaxy some 13-billion light-years away, which makes it a candidate for the most distant object ever seen.”

in the meantime, i thought i’d steal a blogging idea from peter frost, and give ya’ll an idea of what to expect from this blog during 2014. (tl;dr: more of the same, really. (~_^) )

– more on mating patterns: long-term inbreeding and outbreeding practices in human societies and why some peoples go for inbreeding and why others do not. also, the relationship(s) (if any) between mating patterns and family types (think emmanuel todd). also, more on the connections between mating patterns and clannishness (or not) and behavioral patterns like civicness, corruption, and nepotism.

– democracy: including the contrasts between liberal vs. consensus democracy and the idea that there are democratic tendencies in a lot of societies — probably the majority of societies — but very few places where you’ll find liberal democracy and even fewer places where liberal democracy works.

– i want to look further at how renaissances and reformations happen, and why human accomplishment has most definitely not been uniform across the globe.

– violence: mostly the differences (if any) between societies where feuding is common vs. those that engage in large-scale warfare (thanks, grey!).

– i’ll also be asking: how does assimilation happen? and i’ll be asking/looking for evidence for if/how it does.

this past summer, i started posting about the history of mating patterns in europe, and i had a plan all worked out, but i got (seriously) side-tracked. typical! i’m going to pick up that posting plan!…right after i post about the history of mating patterns/family types/social structures in the nordic nations…right after i post about the mating patterns/family types/social structures of the franks.

Life on Earth may have developed below rather than above ground, reveal scientists – “Scientists have now discovered microbes living and reproducing as deep as 5km (3.1 miles) below ground and studies have shown that they are likely to have survived in complete isolation from the surface biosphere for millions and perhaps even billions of years. One of the latest studies into the deep biosphere has found that these microbes form a distinct subsurface community of genetically similar individuals despite living on opposite sides of the world. This global similarity of such an isolated life-form suggests that they may have evolved directly from a common ancestor that lived as long ago at the period when life on earth originated, some 3.5 billion years ago.”

Big brains are all in the genes – “Scientists have moved a step closer to understanding genetic changes that permitted humans and other mammals to develop such big brains…. Dr Humberto Gutierrez, from the School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, UK, led research which examined the genomes of 39 species of mammals with the aim of better understanding how brains became larger and more complex in mammals…. The researchers found a clear link between increased brain size and the expansion of gene families related to certain biological functions.”

Western scrub-jays allocate longer observation time to more valuable information – “When humans mentally reconstruct past events and imagine future scenarios, their subjective experience of mentally time travelling is accompanied by the awareness of doing so. Despite recent popularity of studying episodic memory in animals, such phenomenological consciousness has been extremely difficult to demonstrate…. Thus, the jays can collect information to solve a future problem. Moreover, they can differentiate sources of information according to their potential value and modify behaviour to efficiently collect important, usable information. This is the first evidence of metacognition in a species that passes the behavioural criteria for both retrospective and prospective mental time travel.”

H. Heidelbergensis Preferred Island Life – “[B]etween 500,000 and 200,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis preferred to live on islands in the flood plains of major rivers, where they would have had access to big herbivores that grazed on the rich grasses, water birds and plants with edible roots, and leafy vegetables. The island itself offered protection from other hungry predators, and raw materials such as wood and stone for fashioning tools would have been abundant.”

Older Dads: Possible Links to Autism, Schizophrenia in Offspring – inherited epigenetic effects? – “Maria Milekic, PhD, reported today, at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology annual meeting in Hollywood, Florida, that old mice have an epigenetic change ‒ a loss of DNA methylation at the locations where the genetic code starts being transcribed. DNA methylation is a biochemical process that plays an important regulatory role in development and disease. The work was done by a research team in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. Offspring of old fathers showed the same deficit in DNA methylation, and they differed in their behavior from the offspring of the young fathers.”

Inherited memories – greg cochran on inherited epigenetics (note: re. a different mouse epigenetics study from the one above).

Genetic influence on family socioeconomic status and children’s intelligence – “[U]sing a new technique applied to DNA from 3000 unrelated children, we show significant genetic influence on family SES, and on its association with children’s IQ at ages 7 and 12. In addition to demonstrating the ability to investigate genetic influence on between-family environmental measures, our results emphasize the need to consider genetics in research and policy on family SES and its association with children’s IQ.” – can somebody just give plomin a nobel already? or at least a hearty pat on the back? (^_^)

Human brain hard-wired for rural tranquillity – “Humans may be hard-wired to feel at peace in the countryside and confused in cities – even if they were born and raised in an urban area…. Dr Ian Frampton, an Exeter University psychologist, stressed the researchers still had more work to do, but said they may have hit upon something significant…. Professor Michael Depledge of Exeter University, a former Environment Agency chief scientist, said urban dwellers could be suffering in the same way as animals kept in captivity. He said the move to the cities had been accompanied by an ‘incredible rise in depression and behavioural abnormalities’.” – h/t ed west!

Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome – “[S]hort-term consumption of diets composed entirely of animal or plant products alters microbial community structure and overwhelms inter-individual differences in microbial gene expression. The animal-based diet increased the abundance of bile-tolerant microorganisms (Alistipes, Bilophila and Bacteroides) and decreased the levels of Firmicutes that metabolize dietary plant polysaccharides (Roseburia, Eubacterium rectale and Ruminococcus bromii). Microbial activity mirrored differences between herbivorous and carnivorous mammals, reflecting trade-offs between carbohydrate and protein fermentation. Foodborne microbes from both diets transiently colonized the gut, including bacteria, fungi and even viruses. Finally, increases in the abundance and activity of Bilophila wadsworthia on the animal-based diet support a link between dietary fat, bile acids and the outgrowth of microorganisms capable of triggering inflammatory bowel disease. In concert, these results demonstrate that the gut microbiome can rapidly respond to altered diet, potentially facilitating the diversity of human dietary lifestyles.”

The EU is corrupt because southern Europe is corrupt – “Nigeria is riddled with corruption and theft because enough people are corrupt (and it doesn’t have to be that many) that it makes no sense to be an honest person. For societies to avert this situation free-riders need to be punished (shamed, ostracised, prosecuted) by other individuals acting with the support of the rest of society, and almost as importantly, for those punishers not to be punished in turn, as happens in clannish societies where people care more about their family than the well-being of the wider society. Destroying the power of the clans can take a very, very long time; around the North Sea it began a good millennium ago.” – from ed west.

Late Stone Age settlement unearthed on Cyprus – “Excavations at Ayia Varvara-Asprokremnos (AVA) by archaeologists from the University of Toronto, Cornell University and the University of Cyprus have uncovered, among other objects, the earliest complete human figurine on the island. The site has been carbon-dated to between 8800-8600 BC, near the beginning of the Neolithic Period – also known as the Late Stone Age – when the transition from hunting to farming economies was occurring throughout the Middle East.”

Terracotta Warriors Inspired by Ancient Greek Art – “Nickel’s evidence includes newly translated ancient records that tell a fantastic tale of giant statues that ‘appeared’ in the far west, inspiring the first emperor of China to duplicate them in front of his palace. This story offers evidence of early contact between China and the West, contacts that Nickel says inspired the First Emperor (which is what Qin Shi Huangdi called himself) to not only duplicate the 12 giant statues but to build the massive Terracotta Army along with other life-size sculptures.” – see also The First Emperor and sculpture in China.

Phallic objects an ancient PNG status symbol? – “The cache of elaborately crafted tools was discovered at a construction site on New Britain Island, north-eastern PNG, in late 2010. Between 6000 and 3000 years old, the tools are made of a type of volcanic glass called obsidian and, remarkably, several of them are shaped as phalluses.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet – “I don’t think most people yet realize just how fast the arc of technological innovation is bending skyward right now, and what that’s really going to mean. I hang around with the people who are making this stuff happen, and *they* don’t know what it’s going to mean. *Nobody* does.” – from malcolm pollack. (google really IS going to take over the world! =/ )

Ancient DNA Links Native Americans With Europe – “…from the complete nuclear genome of a Siberian boy who died 24,000 years ago — the oldest complete genome of a modern human sequenced to date. His DNA shows close ties to those of today’s Native Americans. Yet he apparently descended not from East Asians, but from people who had lived in Europe or western Asia. The finding suggests that about a third of the ancestry of today’s Native Americans can be traced to ‘western Eurasia,’ with the other two-thirds coming from eastern Asia…. It also implies that traces of European ancestry previously detected in modern Native Americans do not come solely from mixing with European colonists, as most scientists had assumed, but have much deeper roots.” — see also: The First of the Mohicans from greg cochran.

Your face may have been sculpted by junk DNA – “There is a huge degree of variation in human faces but, as family resemblances show, the overall shape is heavily constrained by genetics. However, so far, geneticists have identified only a small number of genes that influence the shape. These explain just a tiny fraction of the variation seen in human faces. According to Axel Visel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and his colleagues, more variation is controlled by distant-acting enhancers. These are short sequences of DNA, in non-coding regions of the genome, that can influence the activity of the facial genes, even if they are a long way along the DNA strand.”

Behavior problems in preschool and child care centers may be an issue of genes – “A new study suggests that some children may be genetically predisposed to developing behavioral problems in child care and preschool settings…. [B]irth parents who had high rates of negative emotion and self-control, based on a self-reported temperament scale, were more likely to have children who struggled with behavioral issues such as lack of self-control and anger, in child care centers. They controlled for adoptive parent’s characteristics, and still found a modest effect based on the genetic link.”

Your Ethnicity Determines the Species of Bacteria That Live in Your Mouth – “[P]eople from each of the four different ethnic groups represented in the study (all participants self-identified as either Caucasian, African-American, Chinese or Latino) generally had similar species of bacteria, especially underneath the gums. As a result, simply by counting which varieties of bacteria appeared in this area, the researchers developed a model that was able to guess a person’s ethnicity with an accuracy significantly better than chance — it got it right 62 percent of the time. Some groups were even easier to identify via the bacteria than others: It could correctly identify Latinos 67 percent of the time and African-Americans with 100 accuracy. The variation along ethnic lines, they believe, is a reflection of genetics, not environment. That’s because, if you assumed that the mouth microbiome is totally dependent on environmental factors, you’d expect that members of the same ethnic group would have different mixes of bacteria depending on whether they were first-generation immigrants to the U.S. or had family histories that stretched back generations in the country. Instead, people’s background — in terms of foods they ate and other lifestyle trends — didn’t seem to have any correlation with the bacterial communities in their mouths.“ – h/t super bob!

Herpes virus genome traces the ancient path of human migration – “Researchers…sequenced the genomes of 31 samples of herpes simplex virus type-1 to reconstruct how it hitchhiked on humans as they dispersed around the world. The results match the pattern proposed by the ‘Out of Africa’ theory, which has become the most widely accepted scenario for ancient human migration. The analysis showed that African strains of the virus contained the most genetic diversity — suggesting that they had the oldest roots.”

Life on Earth Was Not a Fluke – “Figuring out how biomolecular self-organization happens may hold the key to understanding life on Earth formed and perhaps how it might form on other planets.” – h/t jayman!

Low historical rates of cuckoldry in a Western European human population traced by Y-chromosome and genealogical data – “[W]e estimate that over the last few centuries, EPP rates in Flanders (Belgium) were only around 1–2% per generation. This figure is substantially lower than the 8–30% per generation reported in some behavioural studies on historical EPP rates, but comparable with the rates reported by other genetic studies of contemporary Western European populations. These results suggest that human EPP rates have not changed substantially during the last 400 years in Flanders and imply that legal genealogies rarely differ from the biological ones.” – h/t rob brooks!

Sex on the Mind – “It is a truth universally acknowledged — at least by biologists — that every person owes his or her existence to parents who successfully reproduced, each of whom, in turn, had two parents who did the same … and so on, going back hundreds of millions of years to the first ancestral blob (or two) of protoplasmic goo that trundled onto terra firma from the early earth’s organic soup.” – from david barash. — see also: Why Have Sex? – from the advanced apes.

Asymmetries in altruistic behavior during violent intergroup conflict – “Some empirical studies on intergroup conflict in hunter-gatherer societies and chimpanzees indicate that fitness relevant risks and potential benefits of attacks and defenses might have differed substantially under ancestral conditions. Drawing on these studies, it is hypothesized that the success of defenses was much more important for individual and kin survival and that a disposition to act altruistically during intergroup conflict is thus more likely to evolve for the strategic situation of defense…. Analyzing detailed historical case data from 20th century wars, this study finds that altruistic behavior towards members of the in-group indeed seems to occur more frequently when soldiers are defending themselves and their comrades against enemy attacks.” – h/t hbd bibliography!

Paradoxes of the Nordic Model II – “Denmark is a high trust, highly cooperative society. There is very low crime. Most parked bicycles are not even locked. Bank employees may not work very efficiently, but nobody tried to swindle me. In theoretical terms, what it means is that when there are very few defectors, the amount of common good produced overall is maximized. So everybody is well of, even though they don’t work hard – but they don’t free-ride, either….” – from peter turchin.

Napoleon Chagnon: The Fierce Sociobiologist – “[Yanomamo] Men from the highland villages were much less belligerent than men from villages along the river. Heterogeneity in belligerence existed even within this single tribe.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: The couple having four babies by two surrogates – “A British couple are to become parents of two sets of twin babies carried by two Indian surrogate women they have never met. Experts say twiblings – or children born to separate surrogates but created from the same batch of embryos – are not uncommon in India.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Gang Rape in India, Routine and Invisible – “[T]he Mumbai case provides an unusual glimpse into a group of bored young men who had committed the same crime often enough to develop a routine. The police say the men had committed at least five rapes in the same spot. Their casual confidence reinforces the notion that rape has been a largely invisible crime here, where convictions are infrequent and victims silently go away.” – see also: Trying to Make Sense of India’s Sexual Violence, State by State from t.greer.

Fate of new genes cannot be predicted – “New versions of genes, called alleles, can appear by mutation in populations. Even when these new alleles turn the individuals carrying them more fit to survive and reproduce, the most likely outcome is that they will get lost from the populations. The theory that explains these probabilities has been postulated by the scientist J.B.S. Haldane almost 90 years ago. This theory has become the cornerstone of modern population genetics…. The research team … has now experimentally tested Haldane’s theory.”

Functional genetic variation in humans: Comprehensive map published – “European scientists, led by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE)’s Faculty of Medicine in the context of the GEUVADIS project, today present a map that points to the genetic causes of differences between people. The study, published in Nature and Nature Biotechnology, offers the largest-ever dataset linking human genomes to gene activity at the level of RNA.”

Can Your Language Influence Your Spending, Eating, and Smoking Habits? – “[S]peakers with weak future tenses (e.g. German, Finnish and Estonian) were 30 percent more likely to save money, 24 percent more likely to avoid smoking, 29 percent more likely to exercise regularly, and 13 percent less likely to be obese, than speakers of languages with strong future tenses, like English.” – (“but where does language come from?” hbd chick mumbles to herself in the back row….)

‘Love hormone’ may play wider role in social interaction than previously thought – “The new study, to be published Sept. 12 in Nature, pinpoints a unique way in which oxytocin alters activity in a part of the brain that is crucial to experiencing the pleasant sensation neuroscientists call ‘reward’…. ‘People with autism-spectrum disorders may not experience the normal reward the rest of us all get from being with our friends….’ Some genetic evidence suggests the awkward social interaction that is a hallmark of autism-spectrum disorders may be at least in part oxytocin-related. Certain variations in the gene that encodes the oxytocin receptor – a cell-surface protein that senses the substance’s presence – are associated with increased autism risk.”

More Money, More Children – “‘[N]ow better-off people seem to be having more children; in the U.S., the fertility rate of wives whose husbands are in the top decile of income is back where it was a century ago.'” – h/t puzzle pirate!

Morality and the Epiphany of Joshua Greene – “The manifestations of morality are complex, but its origins are simple. Evolved behavioral predispositions are the ultimate reason for its existence…. Those behavioral traits evolved without a goal, and without a purpose. They exist because they happened to increase our chances of surviving and procreating at a time when our mode of existence as well as our social and physical environment were radically different from what they are now.” – helian’s on fire! (not literally … i hope.)

Are Women Less Corrupt? – “Women are more likely than men to disapprove of — and less likely to participate in — political corruption, but only in countries where corruption is stigmatized…. ‘When corruption is stigmatized, as in most democracies, women will be less tolerant and less likely to engage in it compared with men. But if ‘corrupt’ behaviors are an ordinary part of governance supported by political institutions, there will be no corruption gender gap.'” – h/t jayman!

Some people are feminine – get over it – “Whenever you have one group of people who believe one thing for ideological reasons, and another who believe something else because their business model depends on it, I tend to trust the latter. Who do you think knows more about the minds of girls and boys — the academics who’ve spent years discussing gender feminism, or people who sell toys?” (~_^) – from ed west.

Stephen Hsu on Cognitive Genomics – “At the extremes, there are some academics and social activists who violently oppose any kind of research into the genetics of cognitive ability. Given that the human brain — its operation, construction from a simple genetic blueprint, evolutionary history — is one of the great scientific mysteries of the universe, I cannot understand this point of view.”

Everyday sadists take pleasure in others’ pain – “[P]eople who score high on a measure of sadism seem to derive pleasure from behaviors that hurt others, and are even willing to expend extra effort to make someone else suffer.” – yeah. you know who you are.

Making The Right Mistakes: Error Management And The Evolution Of Errors – “Human cognitive mechanisms evolved to deal with the problems of the past, where we spent 99% of our history, not those of the present. We should, therefore, hardly expect our brains to perform well all the time in modern settings where the social and physical environment is so different.”

From Slavs to Slaves – “Between 1500 and 1650, Eastern Europe exported 1.5 million slaves to North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Western Europe exported a little over a million between 1530 and 1780.” – from peter frost.

2013 ig nobel awards were announced this week! my favorite this year: the probability prize – “[T]he longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.” (^_^)